The Hand That First Held Mine (21 page)

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Authors: Maggie O'farrell

Tags: #Literary, #Psychological, #Family Life, #Historical, #Fiction

BOOK: The Hand That First Held Mine

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‘You don’t want dinner?’

‘I don’t want dinner.’

‘You’ll have coffee, though. How about a sandwich? I can make you a nice ham and—’

‘Mum, I’d love to but I can’t.’

‘You’ll pop upstairs and see your grandmother, won’t you? It would make her day, darling, you know it would.’

‘Mum,’ Ted holds his brow in his fingertips and massages his temples, ‘another time, I promise. Right now, I have to go. Elina’s been on her own all day—’

‘Well, so has your grandmother.’

Ted takes in a breath and lets it out again. ‘Elina’s been on her own with a small baby. The feeding’s not going so well and—’

‘Really?’ His mother turns from the coffee-maker, her face ablaze with alarm. ‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong. He’s—’

‘He’s not eating? He’s losing weight?’

‘He’s fine. He’s just crying a lot, that’s all. It’s just wind or colic, Elina thinks.’

‘Colic? Is that serious?’

‘No,’ he says, ‘lots of babies get it. I probably had it. Don’t you remember?’

His mother turns back to the coffee-maker and flicks a switch, her reply drowned by the grinding of beans.

‘What did you say?’ Ted sits forward in his seat. ‘Actually, you know what? I’ll have just water. That would be great.’

‘Not coffee?’

‘No. Water.’

His mother opens the fridge. ‘Still or sparkling?’

‘Was I breastfed or did you—’

‘Still or sparkling?’

‘Either. Anything. Just tap water’s fine. I don’t know why you buy that crap anyway.’

‘Language, Ted.’

‘So, was I?’

His mother is searching in a high cupboard for a glass, her back to him. ‘Were you what?’

‘Breastfed.’

‘Do you want lemon?’

‘Yes, OK.’

‘Ice?’

‘Anything. Doesn’t matter.’

She puts down the glass and starts rummaging in the freezer. ‘I told your father to fill the ice-trays the other day but I bet he didn’t.’ She extracts a whole fish, frozen solid inside its wrapping, a plastic box of some clear, brackish fluid. ‘Here’s one,’ she mutters, ‘empty, of course, but where’s the other?’

‘Mum, forget the ice. I’ll have it just as it is.’

‘I ask him to do these things and it’s as if he doesn’t even—Aha!’ She holds aloft an ice-tray triumphantly. ‘Here am I, maligning your poor father, and look – ice.’ She drops three cubes into Ted’s water and they split on impact. She replaces the frozen fish before handing Ted his glass.

‘Thank you,’ he says, and takes a long drink. ‘So, was I breastfed?’

His mother sits opposite him at the table. She shakes her head, her mouth pursed with distaste. ‘I’m afraid not. It was bottles all the way with you.’

‘Really?’

His mother jumps up again. ‘Now, where did I put those papers?’

‘It’s funny,’ Ted says, as she moves a pile of newspapers from a chair, then puts them back, ‘they tell you nowadays that you have to breastfeed for their immune systems. Elina’s always saying I’m more resistant to illness than anyone she’s ever met. And if I wasn’t breastfed that just disproves the whole theory, doesn’t it?’

His mother opens a cupboard door, peers inside, then shuts it. ‘I know they’re here somewhere, I had them only this afternoon, but where . . .’ She darts forward and pounces on a sheaf of white documents. ‘Here they are! I knew they were here somewhere.’ She puts them down in front of Ted.

‘What are these, anyway?’

‘Some financial dealing of your father’s.’

‘Yes, but what?’ Ted drains his glass then picks up the paper on top of the pile.

‘Don’t ask me, darling. He doesn’t discuss these things with me. Something about a trust. For the baby. You get some money back from the government or something.’

‘He’s setting up a trust for the baby?’

‘I think that was it. We both worry sometimes, you know. Especially now you have the baby.’

‘Worry about what?’

‘Well, you know. Yours and Elina’s income is so . . .’

‘So what?’

‘Unreliable.’

‘Unreliable?’

‘Not unreliable. Irregular. Erratic. So we thought we would sort out some money for the baby, just in case.’

‘I see,’ Ted murmurs, trying to hide his smile. He restrains himself from asking, in case of what? ‘That’s very kind of you. Have you got a pen?’ His mother hands him a fountain pen and Ted scribbles his name in the box marked ‘consent’.

At the door, his mother is still talking about the shower and towels and popping up to see his grandmother.

‘Sorry,’ Ted says, kissing her cheek, ‘got to go.’

‘You’re not going to jog all the way to Gospel Oak, are you?’

Ted walks backwards, waving at her. ‘No. I’ll get the bus.’

‘The bus? I’ll give you a lift. You don’t have to get the bus. I’ll drive you, then I can see—’

‘I’ll get the bus,’ Ted says, still waving, still walking. Then he stops.

His mother regards him, the door held in one hand. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Do you remember . . . ?’ he asks, then has to break off to think. ‘A man came to the house once. And you . . . you sent him away. I think. I’m sure you did.’

‘When?’

‘Years ago. When I was small. A man in a brown jacket. Sort of untidy hair. I was upstairs. You were arguing with him. You said – I remember this – you said, “No, you can’t come in, you have to leave.” Do you remember that?’

His mother gives an emphatic shake of her head. ‘No.’

‘Who would he have been? He was looking up at the house as he walked away. And he waved at me. You don’t remember?’

She isn’t looking at him. She is running her hand over the paint-work of the door, as if checking for cracks. ‘Not at all,’ she says, with her face turned away.

‘He waved at me as if he—’

‘Sounds like a travelling salesman or something. We used to get a lot of them coming to the door in those days. A pushy lot, they were.’ His mother turns to him, teeth bared in a smile. ‘That’s the most likely explanation.’

‘Right.’

‘Goodbye, darling. See you soon.’ She shuts the door quickly and, after a moment, Ted turns and sets off across the street.

Elina doesn’t hear Ted’s key in the lock because the baby is screaming again, his fist rammed into his mouth, his head buried in her neck. She is doing circuits of the living room in that special slow-bouncing walk, like someone on the moon, Elina thinks, or someone in deep snow. The baby has fed for two thirty-second bursts in the last hour: he latches on with gusto but then pulls away, shrieking. Is he in pain? Is there something wrong with her milk? Doesn’t he like it? Is there something wrong with him? Or is there something wrong with her?

Elina eyes the baby book on the sofa. She’d bought it because the woman in the bookshop had told her it was the ‘absolute baby Bible’. She’s looked up ‘wind’, she’s looked up ‘crying’, she’s looked up ‘feeding problems’ and ‘colic’, she’s looked up ‘despair’ and ‘agony’ and then ‘fathomless grief’, but she can’t find anything helpful.

She changes the baby’s position so that he is lying along her forearm, his head cradled in her palm. She rubs her other hand up and down his back. He seems to accept this change with a seriousness, a concentrated frown, as if to say, yes, let’s try this, maybe it will work. Lasse, she makes herself think, as she looks down at his silken head, Arto, Paarvo, Nils, Stefan. How are you supposed to choose one name for your child? How does anyone decide? Does he look like a Peter, a Sebastian, a Mikael? Or is he a Sam, a Jeremy, a David? She is feeling, along the tendons and veins of her arms, minute adjustments, peristaltic gurgles, catches, releases of his tiny alimentary canal and she is focusing so entirely on these that when she raises her head, and sees the outline of two faces in the darkened window before her, she lets out a shriek, whirling round, clutching at the baby so as not to drop him.

It’s Ted, who has come into the room behind her, a wry smile on his face, dressed in his jogging clothes, flinging his keys to the sofa. ‘Well,’ he is saying, ‘that’s quite a greeting.’

The baby, frightened by her shriek, begins to wail again. Not with the rasped, raw shouts of the last hour but a new, tense, spiralling cry.

‘You scared me,’ she mouths over the noise.

‘Sorry,’ he mouths back. ‘How are you two?’

She shrugs.

‘Do you want me to take him?’

Elina nods, hands over the baby. Her arms feel light, oddly numb, as in that game where you stand pressing your hands to the door-frame, then step back and your arms float, of their own accord, up into the air.

She slumps down to the sofa, closes her eyes and rests her head on the low cushions. After two, perhaps three seconds of this oblivion, she feels a hand on her arm. ‘I think he’s hungry.’ Ted is handing the baby back to her. ‘Maybe you should feed him.’

‘For God’s sake,’ she screams, as she yanks at her shirt, trying to pull it up and hook it under her chin while she fumbles with the catch of her bra, the pad, the angle of her nipple, the baby’s fist, which is flailing dangerously close to the swell of her rigid, hot-skinned breast. ‘What do you think I’ve been trying to do for the last hour?’

Ted gazes down at her, perplexed by her sudden anger. She sees him take a deep breath before he speaks. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he says, in a slow, placatory voice. ‘I’ve only just got in.’

The baby is slippery in her grasp, he is puffing and writhing with anxiety, with hunger, she wants nothing more than to lie down, to apologise to Ted, to have this breast drained of its sore, scalding milk, for someone to bring her a drink of water, for someone to tell her it’s all going to be all right. The baby is staring at the breast, hesitating, then his gums clamp down firmly and Elina’s whole body curls with the pain of it. He seems to think for another few seconds and then, at last, he begins to suck, with the absorbed air of someone getting down to business, his eyes moving back and forth, as if reading invisible text in the air.

She lowers her shoulders, very slowly, a bit at a time. She looks up into the room. Ted is sitting in the chair opposite, watching them, frowning, one leg crossed over the other. She attempts a smile at him and she sees that, in fact, he is not watching them but looking at something near them. He has that odd, unfocused look in his eyes.

‘Are you all right?’

He blinks and focuses on her, bemused. ‘Huh?’

‘Are – you – all right?’

He seems to shake himself. ‘Of course. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason. Just, you know, checking.’

‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t what?’

‘Keep checking. Keep asking me if I’m all right.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s annoying. I keep telling you I’m fine.’

‘Annoying?’ she repeats. ‘It’s annoying that I care about you, is it?’

Ted pushes himself to his feet. ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he mutters, and walks off.